Your first CB? what year started? any other radio interest?

[hotrod]

fist mobile cb= was in 1990/91? was a little midland with channel buttons on mic
looked like a uniden 510 alot
first base cb=was in 1994 was a 40 channel am only courier was black
with woodgrain trim was ok

 

[wcsd106]

First radio was one Dad brought home from a yard sale in 1991 or so. I wish I could remember the brand, I'd like to find another one like it for nostalgia purposes.

It was built like a Cobra 29, but maybe a tad narrower. Had 7 weather channels, but the faceplate if I remember correctly was gray.. Wasn't a common brand like Cobra/Midland/uniden etc.. It was something like Channel Master or Roadmaster or something like that.

Needless to say once I got interested we quickly ended up with a TRC458 base station, and within a year we were both licensed hams.

I passed the extra exam (written & 20wpm code) less than a year later.

 

[brownstone101]

i was exposed to cb when i was 8~10yrs old.
my grandpa had a hy-gain II on a AC/DC base and a huge fiberglass or 102" base wihip (i cant remember) but the 2x4 it was mounted on rotted and snapped in a wind storm and was laid over for years. he used it to talk with my dad when he was in the area and or other people, my dad had a K40 and i think a cobra in his 71 camaro RS.

but when i was 8~10 i would run in the garage and play with it and my grandpa showed me how to use it. i could hear truckers in the area and i would always just scan listen for people.

i still have that hi gain and i base AC inverter. it was made with a speaker channel and everything. i now use a cobra cam 89 and currently have a uniden 510xl on the base. i need to wire a male 4 pin cobra pin into the hi gain. just fixed my HR2510 i got for 3$ with 2$ worth of parts and its working great. that goes in the car. and now im going to use my midland 77-888 on the base and lone the uniden 510xl to the girlfriend in town.

 

[mechanic]

Fist time on the air....

Although my Dad had all sorts of radios in the early seventies, I was not interested until 1982 when I found my first radio, a scorched Royce 604 40 channel mobile. I did not know a thing about CB and blew the final straight away!
After a few Hygain 23 channels, modded them and figuring out antennas I bought a good one that I still have, A Stalker IX FM DX. That was in 1985. Now I have several HR2510s, Cobra 148s, Emperor TS5010, Alinco DX70, my favorite old timers... a Cobra 135 base (43 channel) and two Hygain 623s, Spitfire 454 all mode HT, SS black face and the latest.... AT-5555.
Made my HAM ticket in 1988 and worked the world in the last two cycles now we are into cycle 24! :laugh:

mechanic

 

[slowpoke1w]

My first radio was a Cobra 25 nw st I bought it when I started driving for a living in fall of 2004. I must have put $250 into this thing trying to talk with BIG radios. Had no idea I was getting ripped off by cb shops all over, all of them claiming they could make it talk. Then this old fella in texas I forget the name of the town let me in on the secret behind swing kits, mod kits and any other kind of KIT. They are scams unless you need to drive an amp. He set me on the right path. He took out the mod kit, put in a 1969 final and 2314 driver, did an alinment, took the time to explain swr's and set my co-phase firesticks that I already had mounted on my truck. He spent about 3 and half hours on my rig only charged me $25. Lost 2 other customers messing with my stuff. That day I learned that the delivery system was just as important as the transmitter. I think it was lufkin tx. My set-up would reach out about 14-15 miles on a quite night no one believed it was a barefoot 25. I loved that radio lost it one day at hunts point market I guess the little fella just jumped out through the vent window. He made a mess with all that glass.

 

[mackmobile43]

The first cb I ever operated was a Lafayette Telsat 924 through a radio shack gp which were new in 1970 and belonged to my dad and I was hooked clear through the mid 80's and didn't pick it back up until 2000.

My first radio purchase was a connex 4300dxl and a magnaforce 900 amp and a predator 10-k, sadly the radio turned out to be a pos but a very kool guy in Tyler Texas traded me my first RCI-2950dx which I still own and operate to this day, that trade occurred in early 2001.

 

[pat8942]

My first CB was back in the mid '70s, I had some VHF and UHF radios in between, but I eventually went back to CB.
I can still remember my Dad sitting in front of a mysterious gray box talking to it and it was talking back to him, I got the bug at that moment, I just didn't know it.
That was about 57 years ago.

 

[SharpShooter]

Early 1975....It was a Lafayette Electronics 23 channel AM CB....I think a 525 mobile....Maybe a F series ?

Then around 1980 I got my first 40 channel SSB radio....A Sears RoadTalker.

Then added a Texas Star 250 a couple months later.


Nowdays I'm a SSB Free-bander
.

 

[Quiksilver]

1984. Cobra 29 LTD Classic, Philly...

 

[missourimule]

First c b base

I got started in January 1981.First base was a Pace 1000B , with a polecat grondplane.Since then, so many radios came and went,I cannot remember them all.I had Trams and Cobra 2000's.They was great to sit and look at, but when the 'new' wore off, out the door they went.Trams are like wives, high maintenance.For a solid state base, I prefer the Cobra 139XLR over any of them, followed by the 142.For a tube radio, my choice is the Johnson Messenger 223.I own 4 of them.I think theres about 25 radios packed away, only 3 mobiles in the bunch.

 

[towerdog]

My first CB was a Pearce 23 channel me and my best friend dug out a pile of junk a neighboor down the street was throwing out when I was 8 years old. His dad gave us an antenna and we were sorta on the air, except the radio didnt have any modulation, just a carrier. Later that year my grandaddy bought me a 3ch Realistic walky talky and we set up a link where my friend had the Pearce but could only reply in something like morse code, but it worked, e.g., Frogrunner(me):"your mom home,", Snake:buzz buzz(no) Frogrunner:wanna have a bb gun war/play with fireworks/smoke cigaretts/etc.

Then grandaddy gave me his old midland 23 channel, and mag mount which I stuck on the metal gutter of the house, thank god it was metal because i didnt have a clue about what a ground plane was for.

As I got older quite a few kids were on the air, and remember this was before the days of spoiled brats having their own cell phone, or even a landline separate from their parents, and the internet typically cost by the hour, not like they had a facebook, myspace or yahoo messenger back then.

CB was still a cool thing to do up till about the time I turned 13 then everyone just kinda lost intrest or turned their CB into a heavy metal radio station till their finals burned out.

CB came back in style for a little bit when I got my drivers licence but soon most kids got nextel's and that was pretty much the end of it except for hunting or asking truckers about road conditions, accidents and speed traps.

 

[Cookie55]

First CB was a 100mw channel 14 walkie talkie, think it was a Hitachi, which no one had ever heard of back in '65. The first real CB was an old 23 channel no-name mobile that I converted to a 24 channel, figured out a way to bridge the gap in the mechanical channel selector to get one of the "half" channels between 22 and 23. That was the bleedingest radio I've ever owned. Finally ended up tossing it in the trash after getting so many complaints from the gang on channel 1 while I was talking on channel 23. Yeah no body needs a POS like that. The first 40 channel was a Well, bought it at K-Mart right after the opened up the 40 channels. Anyone every heard of that one? It was an all around good rig, easy to add channels and just worked.

 

[tinman22]

I believe it was 1990 for me. just going into high school and some friends in the neighborhood got started with radios so I joined in and got a rat shack trc434 navaho and the little screw in antenna. took about 2 months and I needed a real antenna and got an a99. thats when it got real interesting and the world got a whole lot bigger

 

[scout943]

MID 60S.

 

[TexasOutlaw]

My first moble was a TRC24 mobile with the crystals in 1/2/3/4 swapped and did lower channels there. My base was a Pierce Simpson Guardian PDLII at 60' on a ROHN tower. Had a Varmit TX1000 behind it. Miss those days.